My stories highlight and explore the major stories of the day through the lens of education, power and innovation. A senior editor at Forbes, I edit the America's Top Colleges, 30 Under 30, Most Powerful People and 100 Most Powerful Women packages. I didn't start here. It's been a winding road through the halls of People,The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, AP and Village Voice. Email: choward@forbes.com Twitter @CarolineLHoward

Sure, there was a 20-foot inflatable male genital organ on their 1987 Licensed to Ill tour. Ditto go-go dancers in cages. Yes, they celebrated sex with girls below the legal age (“The New Style”) and copious helpings of drugs, from sniffing glue to torching crack (“Hold It Now, Hit It”).

It’s true that The Beastie Boys, one of whose founding members, Adam Yauch (MCA) died yesterday from cancer at the way-too-young age of 47, were seriously salty. But they wouldn’t be significant without something more. Where some iTuned-explicit music gets caught up in a simulation of keeping it real, the B. Boys have always known that what gives their songs and videos authenticity is vision, eclecticism and sheer joy. Many were written and shot by Yauch, also a filmmaker (under the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér) and considered the “thoughtful” one of the trio, filled out by Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Adrock). Producer Rick Rubin and Michael Schwartz (Mix Master Mike) were also an early presence and contributed not a little to their sound and image.

“In the history of hip-hop, the Beastie Boys were both improbable and perhaps inevitable: appreciators, popularizers and extrapolators of a culture they weren’t born into,” writes Jon Pareles in the New York Times. “They were Jewish bohemians, not ghetto survivors; they were jokers, not battlers.”

Tipper: I want to talk about this change in content and why parents are concerned. In their concert, they not only make references to oral sex and violence, but young kids, they’ve got 13-year-old girls basically as their fans, invite them on stage to have oral sex with the road crew. They have a 20-foot inflatable penis and a woman dancing in a cage and they take her top off and put their mouths on her breast.

Oprah: And when they come out on stage, they say, “How the four-letter-word are ya?”

Tipper: Of course, there’s a lot of profanity, a lot of references to sexuality and inviting young teenage girls in the audience to bare their breasts.

Jello: The lyrics splashed on the screen are obviously social satire. I would interpret it as making fun of idiots who would use crack. A lot of the language is the same thing I would have seen in country western songs. Again, if I just see the words on a piece of paper I might think, hmm, could this be country, could this be hard rock?

Guccione: We cannot sanitize all the tastelessness in human society. That’s absolutely impossible. Even the human body must live with a certain amount of bacteria. It doesn’t crumble up and die, it doesn’t turn to dust because there are a few ugly or tasteless things in society. The Beastie Boys are the most tasteless group in rock and roll. By their own admission. That is their act. That is what they sell.

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Great tribute. The Beasties’ adolescent antics were, for too many, the end-all, be all of that band’s greatness. But as evidenced on later albums, their growth as artists, and as human beings, was an inspiration, and was as good a story about responsible maturity (which still staying true to the best of one’s roots) that has ever been told. Adam was an artist whose approach to his work inspired countless musicians and others. This news has so many people wrecked – myself included. Thanks for the context, Caroline.

I was 11 when Licensed to Ill came out. I snuck my walkman into school and would listen during music class and block out my friends during lunch, then go home, close the door to my room and not dare share what I was listening to with my mom. For the 11-13 set, the Beasties then were totally about hearing ourselves in them. Hearing that you could and for so many of us, needed to, go a little crazy. They were our older brothers, giving us advice and showing off with their bravado, but all of it came with a wink. It was a big, fat “yes” to knowing that most of what was peddled to the pre-teen set was BS. It was a big middle finger to being fed your values. In that way, there was a Zen to even the early material.

MCA was the one that always came across as the knowing one. That gravelly voice, slow-flow and long stare drew me in. He thought first, spoke later. During the Id-seeking teen years, my friends and I gravitated more towards Ad-Rock. He was the Loki of the group, just messed around and rhymed non-stop. We were all wise-asses.

But once we realized we were not indestructible, we always came back to MCA. When he dropped those lines everyone’s talking about, asking the objectification of women to end in Hip Hop, he wasn’t just talking about music. He was talking to us. Talking to the guys who were still using our youth and other people’s behavior as justification to continue doing things that we already knew were wrong. Adam Yauch never came across as a preacher. He came across as one of our boys, saying what needed to be said, telling us to cut the crap. He took good care of us.

Thanks, Yauch. The only crap left that you didn’t kick out would be the idea that we still needed you. We love you and thank you. You already gave us all we need. You lived a beautiful life.